by RJ Scott
“Well, if all you want to do is ask after her health and you’re not interested in his fine body, then maybe I’ll go over and ask him out for a drink?” Eric held my gaze, but the three of us had rules, and I’d explicitly stated that I’d called dibs, even though it had been Eric who’d seen him first.
“It’s three. Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I asked and waited for him to realize that he should get a wriggle on not to be late on shift. He stretched a little, then ambled inside; that was Eric, the gentle, laid-back giant, the one who was rarely ruffled.
Apart from when he lost people he wasn’t able to save.
When he came back out, in a uniform that was snug over his broad chest, I waved him off and then went back to sitting on the step and passing the afternoon by. Not waiting for Ash. Not at all. I wondered if I should invite him and Mia to our house for a meal on my next evening off. Yeah right, a whole evening off. That’s likely to be in a decade’s time.
When his car turned back into the road and he parked on the driveway, I was striding over before I could even think what I was doing. He spotted me as he opened the door to get Mia out.
“Hi,” he sounded wary.
“How is Mia today?”
He couldn’t quite meet my eyes. “She’s good. Thank you.”
Yep, it was one of those conversations where we were going to be polite, so I grabbed the bull by the horns.
“I’ll buy you a coffee in the park if you like?” I said in that offhand nonchalant way that wasn’t fooling either of us.
He leaned in to pick up Mia, and I imagined he was giving himself thinking time.
“I can’t do coffee,” he said with all the emphasis on the word as if he was implying it was something more. Which it was, but I wasn’t going to give away my endgame yet.
“I’ve seen you drink coffee.” I smiled at him.
“It’s nice you invited me, but I’m a new dad, and I don’t have time to invest in dating.” The words were clearly rehearsed as if maybe he’d sat in his beautiful garden room and thought up what he would say if someone asked him for a coffee. I could work with that because all it meant was that he’d thought about the coffee, and that was a win for me.
“It’s not a date, just a drink, and maybe cake.” I smoothed my fingers over Mia’s downy head, marveling at how soft she was and how tiny. Of course I’d seen babies before. I’d delivered my share of them in the ER, and I had nieces and nephews, but this was different, and for the life of me, I couldn’t work out why. “We can go now, Put Mia in a stroller. Do you have a stroller?”
He couldn’t quite meet my gaze. “I have four,” he mumbled.
“Four? Strollers you mean?”
“One tiny baby-sized, one for rough terrain, one for the car, and one for when I go running.” He tilted his chin as he waited for criticism.
Instead, I picked on the easiest one of those. “You go running?”
“No, but I might. And before you say it. I know we live in a paved road, but in the canyon, it’s rough terrain. She is tiny right now, but she’ll get bigger.”
I held my hands up in mock defense. “I wasn’t going to say a thing. A parent can never be too prepared.”
I could’ve told him stories of teenagers coming into the ER with stomach cramps, not even knowing they were pregnant or being deep in denial—there were no signs of any kind of strollers or similar preparation in cases like that.
“Exactly.” He seemed to warm to my agreement.
“So? Coffee?”
He opened the trunk and pulled out the stroller, laying it on the ground, and then in a couple of deft movements, one-handed, he had it up and clicked into place. I should have offered to hold Mia as he did this, but he seemed adept as if he’d been practicing, and I honestly felt like at that moment I might scare him off. He intrigued me—there was a story behind his deep brown eyes, and I wanted to know more. Why was he a single dad? Where was his support network? Other than his sister, I’d seen no one. Were his friends giving him space with the baby? Did he have friends? He tucked Mia in with blankets from the car, expertly hooked a large changing bag onto the front, shrugged on a backpack that looked heavy, and then locked up the car.
“Okay, then,” he announced. “Coffee.”
We left the street in silence as we worked out who was walking where on the sidewalk until we reached the park entrance and there was room to walk side by side.
“How are things going?” I asked as I stepped over a discarded branch that showed distinct chew marks. This park was dog heaven, and when Mia grew a little, she’d have a wonderful time in here. Maybe she could play with Cap. Or maybe Ash would get her a dog. Who knew?
“She had a weigh-in and checkup, and everything is good. Her weight is good, I mean.”
“She’s a strong baby.”
“So far.”
He sounded as if he expected there to be things that went wrong, and I wasn’t in a position to disabuse him of that notion, given the things I’d seen. Still, I hated to hear his hesitation and wished I knew exactly what to say to make him smile.
We stopped for a moment as a group of school-kids marched across the path in sets of two, being corralled by three harassed teachers. One of them waved at me, and I smiled. Mrs. Ferris was one of those teachers who inspired and whom everyone loved. It was she who’d persuaded me on the first day we moved in to come to the school and talk about hospitals, with subjects ranging from injections to guns to drugs and everything in between. I’d done my first visit at the end of last week and enjoyed it and had persuaded Eric to go next. Mrs. Ferris actually lived a few doors down from us, right next to Gina Lazar of tuna casserole fame.
“Sean! Hello!” she called, and the entire class of six-year-olds broke lines as everyone clustered around me, Ash, and the stroller.
“Is that your baby, Mr. Sean?”
“He can’t have a baby!”
“He so can. Mom said so.”
“Mr. Sean! I lost a tooth!”
“Mr. Sean, is that your boyfriend?”
“My mom says she wants to marry you!”
“Barney pulled my hair!”
“I saw a squijjle.”
“It’s a squirrel, dummy.”
“Get lost, fart face.”
“She called me fart face!”
Everyone talked at once, and Mrs. Ferris waded into the fray. “Children, that’s enough.”
It seemed as though every one of them wanted a piece of me, but she soon regained control and hurried them away with a meaningful glance that she threw at me and then to Ash. I laughed and shrugged, then turned to joke with Ash, who, instead of smiling, was pale and unsteady.
“Mia will be that age one day,” he blurted. “I can’t be a dad to a six-year-old. I’m barely hanging on to being the dad of a baby. Mia will hate me. What if she thinks a squirrel is called a squijjle and nothing I say will change her mind. She’ll go to college, and everyone will laugh at her calling them squijjles, and it will all be my fault. I don’t know what I will do and…”
I stepped into his space, a little closer than would’ve been entirely comfortable for him, and he reared back. Still, it had the desired effect because the panic subsided in an instant. That was something I’d learned when I was a resident, and it never failed me. People were so lost in their own panics that they built a circle around them in which to freak out, and me stepping inside it would throw Ash.
“What are you doing?” he asked, but he couldn’t step away any farther, because he was right up against the small white fence that bordered the path.
“Count back from twenty,” I said, and he focused on my voice. “C’mon, twenty… inhale, exhale, nineteen…”
“Eighteen… seventeen…” He counted down, separating each number with a breath, and as each one passed, he seemed less panicked. In fact, he swayed toward me. Either that, or I was swaying toward him. Only a few inches separated us, and I could’ve leaned forward to get my first taste of his te
mpting lips. Just one small kiss. “… one,” he finished and closed his eyes. “Sorry.”
“You’re entitled to freak out every so often,” I murmured.
He moved imperceptibly closer, and I felt the puff of his breath against my lips. Just a couple more inches, and we could kiss, but if we did, what then? He’d warned me he wouldn’t agree to a second date, and here we were, about to kiss.
Or not.
Ash wasn’t some hookup that I could fuck and forget. This was my neighbor, and it scared me that I was so impossibly attracted to him.
“We should get coffee.” I was torn between talking and kissing, but I had to stay focused. Maybe I was imagining it, but I thought I saw disappointment flicker in his expression, but he smiled and huffed a laugh.
“Industrial strength, please.”
“I’m on it,” I said, and the intense moment passed before we headed for the café. I casually checked the rise and fall of his chest. At least he wasn’t panicking anymore.
We sat at a table with the view out over the small pond, ducks floating in the water, and it was a while before we talked. I was happy to let him guide this, and after moving the stroller so that Mia was in the shade and then fussing with the small blanket, he sat back and took the first sip of coffee, sighing and closing his eyes.
I still didn’t interrupt what looked like an orgasmic experience between man and coffee. The expression on Ash’s face was enough for my cock to begin to fill, as the thought of seeing that face while we were in bed—
“Can I have some cake?” he asked.
I blinked at him to get my head out of the scene I’d been building in which I was buried inside him. “Cake?” I asked. That was a stupid question because yeah, the image of what we could do in bed or on the bed or the floor was difficult to chase away. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt such an instant attraction to anyone. He indicated the plate with the chocolate cake on it, and I felt so stupid.
“Of course. I bought it for you.”
“Thank you, I’ll buy next time,” he assured me and forked up the first mouthful. The way he closed his lips over the morsel, then chewed and sucked before swallowing, the tip of his tongue darting out to collect a stray crumb, meant I went from half-hard to erect in an instant. I had so many questions I wanted to ask. Then I latched on to the perfect conversation starter.
“So, you and your sister look a lot alike.”
He smiled ruefully. “She’s pretty.”
“So are you.” Fuck. Did I say that out loud? Who the hell calls another man pretty? Me clearly.
He looked at me with skepticism. “Do you often call men pretty?”
“Not really, well, maybe.”
“Eric said you did.”
“What do you mean?”
“That first night he thought I was one of your hookups and that I was ‘pretty enough.’”
I took some time to answer.
“Just because pretty is used in a gender-specific way doesn’t mean I don’t find things pretty.” I leaned in. “I think you have gorgeous eyes and a pouty, sexy, kissable mouth and chiseled cheekbones and a strong jaw, and I want to kiss you.”
“Oh,” he offered after a pause. Well, that wasn’t the most amazing of responses, and I’d flashed my hand there with what I was feeling. Way to fuck it up, Sean.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” He forked up another mouthful of cake. “I’m actually flattered, what with being too exhausted to even look in a mirror, let alone shave.”
How did I tell him that the rough stubble and the way his hair fell around his face meant he was even more like sex on legs? I had no game today, and there was no easy way to say any of what I really wanted to say, so I changed the subject.
“Tell me about Mia?” I peered into the stroller and bopped her nose with my finger, not enough to wake her up but enough for her to move a little. She was so cute, all in pink, including a soft hat that shielded her eyes.
“What do you want to know?”
Ash sounded cautious, and I wasn’t sure if that was because he thought I would criticize his choices or whether I was plain old nosy.
“You know that I was with a guy and that we started the journey together. Only he didn’t make it this far.” He pushed the now empty plate away from him and brushed at crumbs on his shirt. “What else do you want to know?”
“Was it hard to find support?”
He shrugged, but his sad expression betrayed him. “You know what it’s like. When you want to start a family and you’re in a”—He paused then air-quoted the rest—“… nontraditional relationship.”
“The longest I’ve dated anyone was David in my senior year, and that only lasted a month, and there was no expectation of a family, so I probably don’t know as much as you think I do. I should imagine it’s impossibly hard.”
“Yeah, as I said, there was supposed to be an us doing this,” he murmured and looked right at me. “Darius was loose with his affections, but he proposed when he was drunk, and I think he loved the idea of it all, even though I knew he’d been seeing this other guy. But I couldn’t bring myself to say yes and overlook his shitty behavior. I should have known there and then that I didn’t really love him, that I was just in love with the stability and supposed support. I said no to marriage at that moment because we were too involved in the surrogacy thing. He said he’d changed his mind about having a baby and marrying me, then announced he was moving to England for work, all in the space of a few minutes. It was only after he left that I learned there had been two other men he’d slept with and that he’d been unfaithful to whatever relationship I had in my head from day one.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, well, the career opportunity was too big for him to refuse apparently, and he said he’d come find me when he was back, even though I told him it was over. Only, after three months, he decided he wasn’t coming back, actually the day before I got an email saying the latest egg had taken and everything was a go. I was the sperm donor, so he had no connection to any of it, and in the best possible way everything fell into place. When I called him to talk to him about it, he said he was sorry. That was it. Just sorry that the baby was nothing to do with him, and he was done with it and that I should have a nice life. He was sleeping around, messing me up, and I honestly thought I was in love. How stupid was that?”
“It’s not stupid to want to be in love.”
He glanced at me and nodded. “Anyway, now you know why I’m here doing this on my own.” Then he tilted his chin in defiance as if he expected me to have something to say on the matter.
“It’s no one’s business, least of all mine, what kind of family you’ve created.”
He inclined his head in thanks. “Now I’m a new dad, and I had to change my plans, but I had money put aside, finished whatever contracts I could, and so far, it’s been exactly as I imagined it would be. Exhausting, exhilarating, and rewarding, and it fits in with my career, which is freelance video game design.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You’re impressed with me? Jeez, you’re a doctor. It’s me who is impressed.”
Our gazes locked, and something passed between us, a mutual attraction, a spark of something that left me fully turned on but buzzing with questions. Only, he beat me to it.
“Is Eric your boyfriend?” he asked in one big hurry, as if the question had been sitting on the tip of his tongue.
I couldn’t help the snort of laughter that escaped me. “No, God no, he and Leo are my best friends, and we share the house. There was one moment way back when Eric and I thought it might work, but one kiss and we were stepping away scrubbing at our lips. Brothers always, lovers never.” I laughed then, recalling that day when we’d thought one easy way to fit dates in with job training schedules was to do each other. It had been an interesting but ultimately horrific debacle.
“I met Eric the other day. He’s bigger than I remembered from the puke-in-my-shrub incid
ent, but he also doesn’t really look like Vin Diesel. I mean, he has hair and everything.” He covered a yawn with his hands.
“He started going gray when he was fifteen, and he’s embraced the fact, even though Leo and I never fail to tease him. He’s a firefighter, big and strong, but he’s a teddy bear once you get to know him. You should meet him socially. And Leo.”
“One day,” he murmured.
Inspiration hit me. “Wait, I have an idea. All being well, the three of us are off-shift on Tuesday, and we have some stuff to do, but then we were thinking of firing up the grill.” I lied about the grill part, but I did know for a fact that all three of our schedules had given us a rare day off together. Typically, on any day where our shifts lined up to give us space, we went out volunteering at the local kids’ home as a team, carrying out handyman-type maintenance, but after we did that, we could then fire up the grill. “You and Mia are welcome to join us. You could meet the guys in better circumstances.” He looked uncertain, and I sweetened the deal. “And Cap the dog as well.”
“It will be difficult though with Mia.”
“In what way? Timing of feeds? We can work around you.”
“No, that should be… but you know she’s a baby, right?”
“Well, yeah.”
“What if she cries?”
That’s what’s worrying him?
“Nothing that the three of us can’t handle,” I reassured him. “Come over about three? I have a shift starting at seven that evening, so we’ll eat early. Is that okay?”
He nodded and was distracted when one of the pond ducks waddled over to us. I wanted him to write everything down about coming over so he didn’t forget, but the duck was far more interesting it seemed. Anyway, I was just next door, so I could pop over and remind him. Or leave a note.
If he doesn’t come over, then I’ll get the message that he doesn’t want to be friendly with his neighbors. Or me specifically.
I needed to find my mojo where attraction was concerned. Too much work, too few hookups, zero relationships, and I was rusty for sure. Not that I’d forget how to kiss a man, particularly not one as gorgeous as Ash. In fact, I could’ve kissed him there and then. It wouldn’t have taken much. I could’ve moved closer, reassured him that even if he was an exhausted single father, I found him far too attractive not to want to kiss him.
